Download Alexander, Agathos Daimon, and Ptolemy

Chapter 5
Alexander, Agathos Daimon,
and Ptolemy: The Alexandrian
Foundation Myth in Dialogue
Daniel Ogden
Most of the contributions to this volume consider the significance of dialogues internal to foundation myths. They exploit the similarities between
variants to expose ideologies central to cities’ self-images; or they exploit the
differences between variants to expose structural tensions within the cities.
This chapter looks, by contrast, at a foundation myth that—initially, at any
rate— seems to have been quite unitary, as indeed one might have expected
from a state created and ruled autocratically. However, it was from the outset
engaged in harmonious dialogues with external myths and institutions, and
it derived much of its meaning and force from them. The myth in question is
that of the foundation of Alexandria and Alexander’s slaying of the Agathos
Daimon (Agathodaimon) serpent in connection with it. This drew upon the
old Greek city foundation myths, with their motifs of animal guides and
serpent slayings, to tell the Alexandrians that their city was the equal of the
old cities and to confer legitimacy and dignity upon it. It spoke with a range
of serpent myths surrounding the figure of Alexander in such a way as to tell
the Alexandrians that Ptolemy was the true heir to his city. It spoke with
native Egyptian traditions of the god Šaï, to tell the city’s Egyptian inhabitants that it was, for good or ill, under the protection of one of their own. It
spoke—presumably, despite Ptolemy—with the foundation myths of Antioch
and Seleuceia in Pieria to confer legitimacy and dignity upon those cities as
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well. And in due course, with light revision, it spoke with Christian tradition,
to give the Christians, too, a gratifying and legitimating involvement, of sorts,
in the city’s creation.1
The Foundation Myth
The foundation myth is first attested rather late, in the earliest recoverable
version of the Alexander Romance, c. ad 300.2 However, much of the material in this version of the Romance is evidently of early Hellenistic vintage,
our myth among it. The narrative tells how Alexander’s architects had marked
out the projected city to extend between the rivers Drakōn (“serpent”) and
Agathodaimon3 (the latter being the name given to the Canopic branch of
the Nile in several inscriptions and in the Geography of Claudius Ptolemy).4
Then:
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They began to build Alexandria from the Middle plain and so the
place took on the additional name of “Beginning,” on account of the
fact that the building of the city had begun from that point. A serpent
[drakōn] that was in the habit of presenting itself to people in the area
kept frightening the workmen, and they would break off their work
upon the creature’s arrival. News of this was given to Alexander. He
gave the order that on the following day the serpent should be killed
wherever it was caught. On receipt of this permission, they got the
better of the beast when it presented itself at the place now called the
Stoa and killed it. Alexander gave the order that it should have a
precinct there, and buried the serpent. And he gave the command
that the neighborhood should be garlanded in memory of the sighting of Agathos Daimon. He commanded that the soil from the digging of the foundations should all be deposited in one particular
place, and even up until this day a large hill is there to be seen, called
the “Dung Heap.” When he had laid the foundations for most of the
city and measured it out, he inscribed five letters, alpha, beta, gamma,
delta, epsilon: alpha for “Alexander,” beta for “king,” gamma for
“scion,” delta for “of Zeus” and epsilon for “founded this unforgettable city.” Beasts of burden and mules were at work. When the foundations of the heroon had been laid down <he set [the stele on which
he had inscribed the letters] on a pillar>.5 There leaped out from it a
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large host <of snakes>, and, crawling off, they ran into the four[?] houses
that were already there. Alexander, who was still present, founded the
city and the heroon itself on the 25th Tybi. From that point the doorkeepers admitted these snakes to the houses as Agathoi Daimones.
These snakes are not venomous, but they do ward off those snakes
that do seem to be venomous, and sacrifices are given to the hero himself <, as serpent-born>. They garland their beasts of burden and give
them a holiday since they helped in the foundation of the city by
carrying loads. Alexander ordered that the guardians of the houses be
given wheat. They took it and milled it and made porridge[?] and gave
it to the snakes in the houses. The Alexandrians preserve this custom
until today. On the 25th Tybi they garland their beasts of burden,
make sacrifice to the Agathoi Daimones that look after their houses
and make them gifts of porridge.
Alexander Romance 1.32.5–13 A ~ §§ 86–88 Armenian
The public cult of Agathos Daimon described here was almost certainly established during the reign of the first Ptolemy, and we may assume that a
mythology, which presumably resembled this one in broad outline, was developed for the serpent at the same time. This is because the Agathos Daimon
serpent was integrated into the Alexander Aegiochus statue type that was
developed in c. 320–300 bc and (eventually) decorated Alexander’s tomb in
Alexandria. In this statue, Alexander wore an aegis decorated with a small
gorgoneion, or Gorgon head; in his right hand, he held a spear; in his left, he
held a palladion, a small statuette of the goddess Athene. The original statue
is attested by eighteen copies in various states of repair— statues, statuettes,
and cameos— all, where provenance is known, deriving from Egypt. In two
severely damaged copies, one in the Louvre’s Collection Lambros-Dattari,
the other a cruder one in the new Museo Bíblico y Oriental in León (Spain),
Alexander’s leg is supported by a tree trunk around which winds a serpent.6
Despite its vestigial attestation, the serpent presumably did feature in the
original. Th is is further suggested by the Aegiochustrong allusions to Phidias’ famous chryselephantine (gold and ivory) Athena Parthenos statue for
the Athenian Parthenon, allusions supported by the featured palladion. The
Parthenos statue, too, wore the aegis and held a spear and a female statuette—in this case, of Nike, Victory. And nestling under the Parthenos’
shield was a magnificent protective serpent, be it the anguiform Ericthonius or the oikouros ophis (“house-guarding snake”) that supposedly lived
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on the acropolis, much as Agathos Daimon was the protective spirit of the
city of Alexandria.7 As with the heroes of old Greece, so with Agathos
Daimon: his death marks the end of his mythical narrative but the commencement and justification of his career as a supernatural protective presence in his land.
Dialogue with the Old Greek Foundation Myths
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The tale broadly aligns with a traditional Greek story type in which the
founder of a city is somehow guided to its site by an animal. We think of the
crows that guided settlers to Cyrene, Magnesia, and (appropriately) Coraces
(“crows”); the cow that guided Ilus to Ilium; the mouse that guided settlers to
Argilos the fish and the boar that guided settlers to Ephesus; the wolves and
the sheep that they were eating that guided Athamas to Athamantia; and the
metaphorical “goat,” the fig with hanging vine tendrils, that led settlers to the
site of Tarentum.8 The motif is also found in some of the multifarious foundation myths of Macedon. According to these, the founder figure, be it Archelaus, Caranus, or Perdiccas, was led to the site of Aegae by goats (aiges).9 Indeed,
Alexander himself, according to a later version of the Alexander Romance,
founded Cilician Aegae in the fashion of the Macedonian founder figure, after
routing the Persians in a night battle in which he had panicked them by driving goats at them with torches tied to their horns.10 If it seems odd, in this
connection, that the Agathos Daimon serpent should only appear at the site of
Alexandria once the Macedonians have already started to build their city, let
us not forget that they had first chosen to site it between the rivers named
Drakōn and Agathodaimon.
The tale also salutes old Greek traditions that derive foundations of cities
from the slaying of a serpent— a serpent that is tightly associated with a water
source and that is duly memorialized afterward.11 The prime example is
Cadmus’ foundation of Thebes in connection with the slaying of the serpent
of Ares. The canonical myth was already established by the fifth century bc.
Cadmus was guided to the site of Thebes by another animal guide, a heifer.
Wishing then to sacrifice the animal, he sent men to fetch water from an
adjacent spring, Dirce. But this was the preserve of the serpent of Ares, which
killed the men. Cadmus killed the serpent, in turn, by dashing a rock against
its head. According to Euripides, at any rate, some sort of cult was established
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in honor of the slain serpent, based in a precinct (sêkos). Intriguingly, Cadmus was himself eventually transformed into a serpent in Illyria, alongside
his wife Harmonia.12
Another example is to be found in the myth that Antoninus Liberalis
takes over from Nicander’s second-century bc Heteroioumena (Metamorphoses). This tells how Alcyoneus slew the apparently anguiform (snake-shaped)
Sybaris or Lamia at Delphic Crisa on Mount Cirphis by throwing her down
the mountainside. As her body dashed against the rocks, it disappeared, and
a spring— Sybaris again— appeared in its place. And it was in the name of
this spring that the Locrians then founded the city of Sybaris in Italy. The
motifs of water source, foundation, and memorialization are explicit, if partly
indirect.13 The resonances between the Theban foundation myth and the Alexandrian one are several: both foundations are rooted in the killing of a
serpent strongly identified with a water source, both result in the foundation
of cult for the serpent (drakōn), and both founder-slayers are themselves,
curiously, ultimately identified with serpents. In the Romance narrative, Alexander is described as serpent-born (of which more anon) and confusingly
projected as a hero in this regard, alongside the heroized serpent that he has
slain. We are inclined to wonder whether Ptolemy was projecting Alexandria as a compensatory foundation for Alexander’s destruction of Thebes. For
what it is worth, the Suda mentions, without elaboration, that Agathos Daimon
also had a heroon in Thebes.14 But however outlandish the Macedonian and
Greek settlers found their new Egyptian environment, the myth reassured
them that their city was born in a similar fashion to those of the old Greek
world.
The Romance narrative casts Alexander as a dragon slayer, but as a dragonslaying story fit for Alexander, it is admittedly less than satisfactory: the serpent in question appears to be more of a nuisance than an ultimate peril; the
hero of the story does not even encounter it in person but superciliously delegates the task of slaying to a nameless group of builders. Perhaps a more
dynamic narrative has been deflated with an element of rationalization
in this version of the Romance. Alexander had to wait until a later version
of the Romance, known to us only from the seventh-century ad Syriac
translation of the Greek original, to get or to recover the full-blown dragon
fight that was his due. This dragon, which he encounters near Indian Prasiace, sucks down oxen whole. Alexander destroys it by feeding it ox hides
restuffed with gypsum, pitch, lead, and sulfur.15 This story was then taken
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up into the c. ad 1000 Persian version of the Romance incorporated into Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.16
Dialogue with the Myths of Alexander’s Other Serpents
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The Agathos Daimon myth also entered into dialogue with the myths of the
other great serpents in the Alexander tradition, almost certainly at Ptolemy’s
behest.17 Two of these other serpent myths are, significantly, strongly tied to
Ptolemy. First, in a well-known passage, Arrian gives us an intriguing insight
into Ptolemy’s own account of Alexander’s march to Siwah. While all others,
he tells us, Aristobulus included, had told that Alexander’s army had been
rescued from the Western Desert by a pair of crows, Ptolemy had given instead
a pair of talking serpents (drakontes).18 Second, Clitarchus, who worked in Ptolemy’s own Alexandria and is now believed to have published soon after 310
bc, recorded the tale of the serpent (drakōn) that appeared to Alexander in a
dream during the siege of Indian Harmatelia and told him how to heal the
dying Ptolemy, the favorite for whom the king was deeply grieving, with the
help of a local herb.19
The most striking serpent myth associated with Alexander is that referred
to in passing in the Romance narrative above and best known from Plutarch,
that in accordance with which he was actually sired by a gigantic serpent (drakōn
again). The cases of the Siwah and Harmatelia serpents invite us to suppose
that this myth, too, was sponsored, if not actually invented, by Ptolemy. The
earliest direct attestation of the serpent-siring myth comes only with Cicero’s
On Divination, of 45–44 bc, although it is important to note that he here
identifies Alexander’s siring serpent with the healing serpent of Harmatelia.20
But we probably have an indirect indication of the myth’s currency closer to
Ptolemy’s own age. It was almost certainly the subject of the secret of Alexander’s birth that Olympias supposedly entrusted to him only as he set out on
campaign and that Plutarch tells us was spoken of by Eratosthenes (c. 285–194
bc).21 When the ghost of Silius Italicus’ Pomponia tells Scipio that he was
serpent-sired, the information is similarly presented as the final revelation
from mother to son of a long-kept secret.22
It seems that Ptolemy or his agents contrived to develop a network of striking serpent-themed myths around Alexander, to the greater glory of Ptolemy
himself, his land of Egypt, and his city of Alexandria. The Harmatelia myth
advertised Alexander’s great affection for Ptolemy. In combination with the
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siring myth, it presented Ptolemy as quasi-brother to Alexander: as the marvelous serpent had given life to Alexander, so it had given new life to Ptolemy.
Given that marvelous serpents, too, had manifested themselves to save Alexander and his army in the Western Desert and so celebrate his bond with the
land of Egypt, and that another again, our own Agathos Daimon, had manifested itself at his foundation of Alexandria to celebrate his bond with the
city, who could doubt that Ptolemy was the rightful heir to Alexander’s splendid Egyptian patrimony?23
Dialogue with Native Egyptian Gods
It has been contended that the myth of Agathos Daimon’s killing also saluted
Egyptian prototypes, and so spoke equally to native Egyptians from the first.
It has, for example, been argued that it salutes the type of Egyptian myths of
dynastic establishment, as instantiated in the tale of the victory of AmmonRa over the Apophis serpent or in that of Horus over Seth-Typhon.24 Unfortunately, the comparanda seem too vague to be immediately compelling.
But that the figure of Agathos Daimon did speak to native Egyptians from
an early stage is demonstrated by their ready embrace of him in his identification with their own serpent deity Šaï, god of destiny. Manetho, the native Egyptian priest of Heliopolis under the second Ptolemy (r. 282–246 bc), undertook
to explain Egypt’s history in Greek for the benefit of its new masters. The relevant fragment of his History of Egypt incorporates the principal Egyptian
gods, some under their interpretatio Graeca (Hellenized) names, into a mythical first dynasty of pharaohs, and Agathos Daimon is already among them,
in second place, no less: Hephaestus, Agathos Daimon, Helios, Cronus, Osiris
and Isis, Typhon, Horus, Ares, Anubis, Heracles, Apollo, Ammon, Tithoes, Sosos, Zeus. By this stage, accordingly, Agathos Daimon had been identified with
Šaï, and an admittedly philhellene Egyptian was happy to embrace the identification.25 Rather more striking is the message conveyed by the famous
Oracle of the Potter. This text, probably third-century bc in origin, perhaps
second, is a unique piece of native Egyptian– derived propaganda against the
Ptolemies’ Macedonian regime, originally composed in Demotic but, ironically, surviving only in Greek. This oracle, which imagines itself to have been
issued at the time of Alexandria’s foundation, prophesies that Agathos
Daimon will abandon the city that is currently being built for the native
Egyptian city of Memphis. In other words, it seems, Alexandria will be
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deprived of its protecting deity. So by this stage, rather less philhellene Egyptians were also accepting the identification of Agathos Daimon with Šaï , and
more particularly accepting his role as patron and protector of Alexandria
and seemingly seeking to appropriate him in this role for their own Memphis.26 This sort of thinking seems to have inspired a tale reported by Cassius
Dio, according to which the portents that followed the fall of Alexandria to
Octavian included the manifestation of a huge serpent with a loud hiss: Agathos Daimon on his way out, or perhaps threatening to leave?27
Given the success of the identification of Agathos Daimon with Šaï, we
may wonder about his origins. Was he essentially a Greek god offered to (among
others) the Egyptians, or was he essentially an Egyptian god appropriated by the
Greeks and Macedonians? The answer turns upon the thorny issue of whether
the Greek Agathos Daimon, whom the classical comic poets had known chiefly
as a protector of domestic stores and sponsor of their enjoyment, and to whom
Timoleon had dedicated his house, had an anguiform identity before he came
to Alexandria, or acquired it only upon his arrival.28 If he did already have
such an identity, it would seem that his identification with Šaï was convenient
and compelling, and an opportunity seized. If he did not, it would seem that the
Agathos Daimon of the myth was rooted in Šaï in the first instance, who was
then made accessible for Greek and Macedonian consumers by a less compelling
identification with their own hitherto humanoid-only Agathos Daimon.
It must be admitted from the first that there is no certain evidence of a
direct nature for Agathos Daimon’s conceptualization as an anguiform prior
to his arrival in Alexandria. Some hold that we find Agathos Daimon represented as a serpent in a single pre-Ptolemaic (or effectively pre-Ptolemaic) image, the relief dated to the fourth century from Boeotian Eteonos, now in
Berlin: a man leading a small boy by the hand offers a cake to a large bearded
serpent that emerges from a cave.29 But the image does not carry the god’s
name, and the serpent could as well be Zeus Meilichios or another anguiform manifestation of Zeus.30 A unique votive relief dated to the fourth century from Mytilene (now in the Samos Museum) is perhaps the best candidate
for a pre-Ptolemaic image of Agathos Daimon in serpent form, though the
case is far from secure. A rampant snake coils upon a rock and is approached
by three adoring male worshipers. Against the rock lies a caduceus, with its
own entwining-snakes motif. The caduceus, which properly belongs to Hermes,
is one of a range of attributes given to the serpentine Agathos Daimon on the
coinage of Roman Egypt from the reign of Nero onward.31 The earliest certain representation of Agathos Daimon as a serpent from the old Greek world
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is, alas, post-Ptolemaic in date and conception. It is also the finest extant
image of him to survive from antiquity. It is found in a Hellenistic relief from
a private house on Delos. A huge bearded serpent coils over a draped altar
flanked by two cornucopia-holding humanoid figures who wear calathos headdresses and who seemingly merge Isis and Agathe Tyche (Good Fortune), on
the one hand, and Sarapis and Agathos Daimon, on the other. In other words,
Agathos Daimon appears simultaneously in two guises (as Asclepius and Hygieia regularly do in their iconography).32
There are, in fact, only two certainly pre-Ptolemaic images of Agathos
Daimon, and both represent him in humanoid form. First, a relief of the late
fourth century bc found to the east of the Parthenon is dedicated to “Agathos
Daimon and Agathe Tyche.” Below the inscription, a male bearded figure
holds a cornucopia and is accompanied by two female figures.33 Second, a
broken relief from Thespiae of the last quarter of the fourth century bc carries
the dedication “Hagestrotos, Timokrateia, Ptoilleia, Empedonika, to Agathos
Daimon” and shows a bearded, avuncular, seated figure being approached by
two worshipers. He holds a cornucopia, and an eagle sits beneath his throne.34
In pairing Agathos Daimon with Agathe Tyche, these images seemingly
bestow upon the god a wider province—namely, that of good fortune in
general—than is evident from the literary sources of the same age, a province
that prepares him well for the role he is to undertake in Alexandria.35 Despite
the absence of serpent imagery, these two humanoid reliefs paradoxically constitute the strongest indication we have that Agathos Daimon was, on occasion, conceptualized as a serpent in the pre-Ptolemaic Greek world. This is
because the syndrome of these humanoid reliefs corresponds closely with those
of the later fourth-century bc humanoid reliefs of Zeus Meilichios, Zeus Ktesios, and, above all, Zeus Philios, all of whom enjoyed parallel iconographic
careers as serpents. Two images of Zeus Philios are of particular interest: the
c. 347 bc Aristomache relief in which Zeus Philios is given both Agathos
Daimon’s traditional cornucopia and his traditional consort Agathe Tyche;36
and the 324–322 bc Eranistai relief, the remains of which preserve an eagle
sitting beneath the throne, which coincides so well in this respect with the
Thespian relief of Agathos Daimon.37 Given the tight similarities between the
representation-syndromes of these gods, a never-anguiform Agathos Daimon
is rather harder to account for than a sometime-anguiform one.
A thought game also suggests that Agathos Daimon was an anguiform
before he came to Egypt. If the origin of the Alexandrian god was indeed in
Šaï, why was a never-hitherto-anguiform Agathos Daimon chosen to serve as
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his interpretatio Graeca, in preference to the Greek anguiform sponsors of
good luck and household prosperity that were thriving in this age, not least
Zeus Meilichios himself? So Agathos Daimon was, we conclude, in origin essentially a Greek god offered to the Egyptians, but one taken up by them with
striking alacrity.
Dialogue with the Foundation Myths of Antioch
and Seleuceia in Pieria
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At a later stage, as we shall see, the Agathos Daimon myth, duly modified,
was to speak to another constituency in Alexandria: its Christians. But let us
first consider its possible impact upon a pair of external—and strongly rival—
cities: the two great Seleucid capitals of Antioch and Seleuceia in Pieria. As we
have seen, Ptolemy seems to have constructed his foundation myth for Alexandria around the Agathos Daimon serpent and its rivers before 300 bc. This
was the year in which Seleucus founded Antioch and Seleuceia. For these cities, too the Seleucids in their turn developed foundation myths that were
similarly built around the motifs of river and serpent (drakōn), albeit in a more
elaborate, symbolically and typologically complex, fashion.38 It is hard to believe that these myths did not constitute, at least in part, a response to the
Ptolemaic myth.
It is now held that the myth of Zeus’ battle with the primeval serpent
(drakōn) Typhon, in which the god destroyed him with his thunderbolts, effectively originated in an interpretatio Graeca of a mythical battle between a
storm god and a sea serpent that had been located since the age of the Hurrians on ancient Syria’s (modern Turkey’s) towering Mount Kasios, now the
Jebel Aqra. For the Hurrians, who had known the mountain as Hazzi (probably the origin of the Greek name Kasios), the storm god in question had been
Teshub, and the dragon Hedammu. For the Hittites, he had been Tarhunna,
and the dragon Illuyankas. For the Canaanites, for whom the mountain was
Sapuna, the storm god in question had been Baal-Sapon, and he had been
victorious over Yam and Lotan (the biblical Leviathan), the sea serpents that
were embodiments of chaos.39
At some point—presumably, early in the Seleucid era—the river Orontes,
the great waterway that flowed beneath Kasios and linked, more or less, the two
new cities of Antioch and Seleuceia in Pieria, was identified with the serpent.
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The Augustan Strabo preserves the tale that the Orontes’ riverbed was created
when Zeus hurled his thunderbolts down on Typhon. As Typhon fled, he cut
the highly serpentine riverbed with his writhing coils, before releasing its source
into it as he finally dived down into the earth. The river initially took Typhon’s
name for its own. The Christian chronographer John Malalas, writing in the
fifth or sixth century ad, was to say that the river actually had four names in all:
Orontes, Drakōn (“Serpent”), Typhon, and Ophites (“Snake River”).40
The fourth-century ad Pausanias of Antioch records a tale about Perseus
and the Orontes in which the hero typologically reenacts his father Zeus’ battle
against Typhon. The river Orontes, at this point called the Drakōn, flooded disastrously, and Perseus advised the local Iopolitans to pray. In answer to their
prayers, a ball of fire came down from heaven and dried up the flood. Like his
father Zeus before him, Perseus, famous destroyer of anguiform monsters
(the Gorgons, the sea monster sent against Andromeda), fought the dragon river
with fire from the sky. Perseus then founded a sanctuary “Of the Immortal Fire”
for the Iopolitans, and took some of the heavenly fire back to Persia, the land
named after him, and there taught the Persians to revere it, appointing trustworthy men to tend the flame, to whom he gave the name “magi.” In other
words, he founded the Zoroastrian religion.41
The foundations of Antioch and Seleuceia in Pieria were associated—
indirectly, at least—with these great dragon slayings by a myth fashioned to
identify Seleucus typologically with Zeus and Perseus in his acts of foundation. John Malalas tells how, as Seleucus was sacrificing to Zeus on Mount
Kasios and asking where he should found his city, the god’s own eagle seized
part of the sacrifice and dropped it in Pieria, where Seleucus accordingly
went on to found the first of the two cities. He gave thanks for the foundation by sacrificing to Zeus Keraunios (“of the Thunderbolt”) in the sanctuary
founded by Perseus. He then sacrificed to Zeus again at nearby Antigoneia to
ask whether he should adopt Antigonus’ city and rename it or found a new
one elsewhere. Again, an eagle seized meat from the altar and dropped it on
Mount Silpios, so signifying that a new city should be built there. As Malalas
tells us, Seleucus chose the exact site for the new city, Antioch, beside the
great Drakōn river, now the Orontes, in such a way as to avoid the torrents
that came down from the mountain.42 The fourth-century ad Libanius had
already made it clear that the meat seized by the Antioch eagle took the specific form of flaming ox thighs.43 The symbolic equivalence of the flaming ox
thigh and the thunderbolt is made clear in Syrian coinage of the imperial
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period, long after the disappearance of the Seleucids, where highly similar series of reverses issued under Marcus Aurelius show eagles bearing either lightning bolts or ox thighs in parallel configurations.44 In his founding of Seleuceia
and Antioch, therefore, Seleucus is projected as a third conqueror of the
Drakōn river. He metaphorically masters it with his pair of city foundations
but also gets the better of it by avoiding the paths of its torrents. Though he
does not deploy thunderbolts or heavenly balls of fire directly against the river,
he is guided to his mastering foundations by Zeus, who drops thunderboltlike flaming ox thighs down from the sky, reminiscent of the weapons he had
used in his primeval battle.
It is curious that the Seleucids should have calqued Ptolemaic imagery in
developing a serpent-river myth for themselves, for all that they were able to
connect that myth with indigenous myths of great antiquity from their own
realm. That they chose to do so in preference to developing a wholly independent imagery must say something of the compelling and immediate power of
Ptolemy’s myth. In this respect, as in others, the Seleucids seem to have been
playing catch-up with the Ptolemies.
A Later Dialogue with Christians, and Perhaps
Something Earlier
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And so to the Christians. The latter part of the Romance’s Agathos Daimon
narrative constitutes an etiology of the private cult practice of (supposedly)
feeding friendly “Agathos Daimon” house snakes. The practice is first attested
in a fragment of Phylarchus, whose history finished in 219 bc with the death of
Cleomenes II of Sparta. He speaks of the Egyptians keeping asps in their
houses: these come when called by a snap of the fingers to receive gifts of barley
in wine and honey, retreating at a second snap (Phylarchus’ designation of the
Agathos Daimon snakes as asps, as opposed to anti-asps, is unique).45 Plutarch
subsequently gives us a vignette of two Egyptian neighbors fighting for possession of a luck-bringing Agathos Daimon snake that they find in the road.46
Christian tradition preserves a tale related to this latter part of the Romance’s story, in that it also has Alexander presiding over the introduction
into Alexandria of good snakes that attack bad snakes. A third-century ad
pseudo-Epiphanian narrative survives in two versions of its own and is reflected
in better, though not perfect, condition in the seventh-century ad Chronicon
Paschale. The three texts differ from one another only by variation in what
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they— quite confusingly— omit. The following translation merges them to
produce an almost fully intelligible story:
Jeremiah was of Anathoth, and he died in Daphnae in Egypt when
he was stoned to death by the local people. He was laid to rest in the
region of the Pharaoh’s palace, because the Egyptians held him in
honor, since he had done them good ser vice. For he prayed for them,
and the asps left them alone, as did the creatures of the waters,
which the Egyptians call menephōth and the Greeks call crocodiles,
which were killing them.47 The prophet prayed and the race of asps
was averted from that land, as were the attacks of the creatures from
the river. Even to this day the faithful pray in the place he lay, and
by taking earth from the site of his tumulus they heal bites inflicted
upon people, and many avert even the creatures in the water. We
heard from some old men, descendants of Antigonus and Ptolemy,
that Alexander the Macedonian visited the tomb of the prophet and
learned the mysteries pertaining to him. He transferred his remains
to Alexandria, and arranged them, with all due honor, in a circle.
The race of asps was thus averted from that land, as similarly were
the creatures from the river. And thus he threw in [sc. inside the circle] the snakes called argolaoi, that is “snake-fighters” [ophiomachoi],
which he had brought from Peloponnesian Argos, whence they are
called argolaoi, that is, “right-hand-men [dexioi] of Argos.” The sound
they make is very sweet and of all good omen.
[Epiphanius] De prophetarum et obitu
~ first recension, p. 9, Schermann
~ second recension, pp. 61– 62, Schermann
~ Chronicon Paschale, p. 293, Dindorf 48
The final sentences remain slightly enigmatic but appear to mean that Alexander took Jeremiah’s deterrent remains from Daphnae and arranged them in
a circle around the city of Alexandria, presumably by distributing the limbs
or, more probably, by sprinkling a fine line of cremation ash: the latter would
recall the tradition found first in Strabo that Alexander had first marked out
the circle of Alexandria for his architects by sprinkling a line of barley meal
(which was then devoured by birds—more animal guides—in an act of good
omen).49 Snakes (and crocodiles) outside the circle were thus prevented from
entering it. He then threw his other snake-fighting argolaoi snakes inside the
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circle (evidently, they could not pass through it any more than any other
snakes could), where they will have destroyed the bad snakes marooned inside it, and taken their place. Jeremiah was evidently a Saint Patrick avant la
lettre and is associated with the phenomenon known to folklorists (in consequence of Saint Patrick) as “Irish earth,” that of the soil of certain places being repellent to certain venomous creatures and an antidote to their venoms,
which is well attested elsewhere in Graeco-Roman culture, at least from the
age of the elder Pliny in the first century ad onward.50 The Jeremiah tale also
salutes a familiar motif of ancient snake-control stories, that of the deployment of a “magic circle” against them, as in the tale of a Thessalian witch’s
battle against the hieros ophis (“sacred snake”) attributed to Aristotle.51
Like the Romance’s myth, this one accounts for the arrival, alongside Alexander, of a host of good snakes in Alexandria, which we may assume were to
be identified with those that became the object of private cult: we note the
Romance’s contention that its Agathoi Daimones “are not poisonous, but they
do ward off those snakes that do seem to be poisonous”: these, clearly, are
“snake-fighters,” too. The tale also efficiently salutes the Argeads’ and thereby
the Ptolemies’ claim to derive their stock ultimately from Argos.52 The motif
of Alexander’s physical transporting of the argolaoi serpents from Argos further salutes the Greek traditions of cult transfer associated with the greatest
anguiform god of the all, Asclepius. Numerous glorious accounts, inscriptional and literary, survive from the later fourth century bc onward describing this god’s journey to a new cult site in the form of a massive, benign serpent
(drakōn, draco). The particularly splendid accounts of Asclepius’ passage from
Epidaurus to Rome describe a journey that supposedly took place in 292 bc,
shortly after, as it would seem, the development of the notion of Alexander’s
encounter with Agathos Daimon.53 It is noteworthy too that the ancient variety
of snakes particularly associated with the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the kindly
and healing pareias (probably Elaphe quatuorlineata, the four-lined snake), had
a reputation for attacking vipers.54
It is hard to believe that the Jeremiah material as we have it, with its motif
of martyrdom, antedates the Christian era (nice as it would have been to
imagine that this was a variant of the foundation legend designed at an early
stage to engage and include Hellenistic Alexandria’s large Jewish population).
The story’s function, in the form we have it, is no doubt to install a figure of
Christian interest at the heart of the foundation of Alexandria for the gratification and validation of its Christian inhabitants. However, it is possible that
the basic tale is older and that Jeremiah has supplanted another marvelous
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figure. The motif of the transfer of a great man’s remains from the land of
Egypt proper to Alexandria is strikingly reminiscent of Ptolemy’s historical
transfer of Alexander’s own body from Memphis to Alexandria.55 On this
basis, it may be that the tale was developed as a typological justification for
Ptolemy’s transfer and therefore, presumably, developed by or for the Ptolemaic dynasty. Another possibility is that the story originated actually as a
more direct reimagining of Ptolemy’s historical transfer of Alexander’s body,
with Alexander accordingly in Jeremiah’s role and Ptolemy himself in Alexander’s. It is unlikely, however, that any original story relating to Alexander’s
body subjected it to dispersal in the fashion of Jeremiah’s, given that it famously lay intact inside his Alexandrian tomb, up until the point at which
Octavian broke off its nose.56 Either way, the original tale would, gratifyingly,
have found a way, directly or indirectly, of bringing Ptolemy where he must
have aspired to be and indeed where he frankly deserved to be: close to the
heart of an Alexandrian foundation myth.
The Alexandrian foundation myth spoke to the new city’s Greek and
Macedonian settlers and to native Egyptians alike. If it did not immediately
speak to the city’s third great constituency, the Jews, it did eventually speak,
with Jewish imagery, to its subsequent Christian inhabitants. The serpent
imagery that it invoked embraced together the figure of Alexander with that
of Ptolemy, the city of Alexandria with Egypt, and the men with the land.
The myth’s immediate and compelling impact is best demonstrated by the
Seleucids’ adoption and adaptation of its imagery for the mythical underpinning of their rival capitals.
Notes
1. For Agathos Daimon in general, see Harrison 1912: 277–316; Cook 1914–40: vol. 2,
part 2: 1125–29; Ganschinietz/Ganszyniec 1918, 1919; Jakobsson 1925: esp. 151– 75; Rohde
1925: 207–8 n. 133; Tarn 1928; Taylor 1930; Dunand 1969, 1981, with bibliography; Fraser
1972: 1:209–11, with associated notes; Quaegebeur 1975: 170– 76 and passim; Mitropoulou
1977: 155– 68; Pietrzykowski 1978; Sfameni Gasparro 1997; Jouanno 2002: 75– 76, 105–8;
Stoneman 2007: 532–34; Stoneman 2008: 56–58.
2. This earliest extant recension of the Alexander Romance, α, is recovered from a
single Greek MS (“A”), reporting a badly corrupt and lacunary account of it, and an Armenian translation of a rather better account of it.
3. Alexander Romance 1.31.7 (A).
4. See OGI no. 672, with further references ad loc.; Claudius Ptolemy Geography 4.5.
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5. This and other angle-bracketed portions are supplied for the corrupt and lacunary
A MS from the Armenian translation; for a full English translation, see Wolohojan 1969.
The β recension has a slightly more elaborate tale: when the gatehouse to the shrine was
being built, a huge, ancient tablet full of letters fell out of it, and it was out of this that the
snakes emerged. Presumably, the notion was that a piece of ancient Egyptian masonry
was being reused. But this tablet full of letters would seem to be a doublet of the tablet that
Alexander has just inscribed with his own five letters.
6. For the Louvre copy, see Schwarzenberg 1976: 235 with fig. 8; Stewart 1993: 247;
Stoneman 2007: 533. I thank Prof. Victor Alonso Troncoso for drawing the León statuette to my attention.
7. See Stewart 1993: 248–50 for the Athena Parthenos comparison. Paus. 1.24.5 speculated that her snake was Ericthonius. The oikouros ophis: Hdt 8.41; Ar. Lys. 758–59 with
schol.; Phylarchus FGrH 81 F72 = Photius Lexicon s.v. οἰκουρὸν ὄφιν; Plut. Themistocles 10;
Etymologicum Magnum s.v. Ἐρεχθεύς. Gourmelen 2004: 346–47 contends that the Parthenos’ snake actually represented both of these.
8. Cyrene: Callimachus Hymn 2.65– 66. Magnesia: I.Magnesia 46 = FGrH 482 F3.
Coraces: Demon FGrH 327 F7; Aristotle F496 Rose. Ilium: Apollodorus Bibliotheca 3.12.3.
Argilos: Heraclides of Pontus FHG ii p. 224 F42; Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Ἄργιλος.
Ephesus: Creophylus FGrH 417 F1 at Athenaeus 361d– e. Athamantia: Apollodorus Bibliotheca 1.9.2. Tarentum: Dionysius of Halicarnassus 19.1–2. For animal guides in general, see
Schmid 1947: 94–101.
9. Archelaus: Hyginus Fabulae 219 (summarizing Euripides Archelaus); Dio Chrysostom 4.70–72. Caranus: Justin 7.1.7–7.2.1 (from Trogus; perhaps ultimately from Theopompus); schol. Clement of Alexandria Protrepticus 2.11, incorporating Euphorion FF38a–b +
1182 Powell = F35 Lightfoot. Perdiccas: Diod. Sic. 7.16.
10. Alexander Romance 2.23 (β).
11. For dragon-slaying traditions at foundation sites in the Greek world, see Trumpf
1958.
12. Pherecydes F22ab, 88 Fowler; Eur. Phoen. 238, 638–48, 657– 75, 818– 21, 931–41,
1006–12 (for the cult), 1060– 66, 1315 (all with schol.), Bacchae 1330– 39, 1355– 60; Hellanicus FF1a, 51, 96, 98; Fowler; Palaephatus 3–4; Apollonius Argonautica 3.1176– 90;
Ovid Metamorphoses 3.28– 98 (the most expansive account); Apollodorus Bibliotheca
3.4.1– 2, 3.5.4; Hyginus Fabulae 6, 148, 178, 274.4; Paus. 9.10.5; Philostratus Imagines
1.18; etc. For the iconography of the episode, see LIMC Harmonia 1– 7, Hesperie 1(?),
Kadmos i 7–47.
13. Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 8. Although the monster’s form is not explicitly described, other lamia monsters in Greek literature are described as part anguiform,
e.g., Philostratus Life of Apollonius 4.25; Dio Chrys. Orations 5 (where comparanda tell us
that the monster in question is a lamia, even though the term is withheld). For lamiai in
general, see Rohde 1925: 590– 95; Fontenrose 1959: 44–45, 100–104, 119–20; Scobie 1983:
25–29; Boardman 1992; Burkert 1992: 82–87; Johnston 1999: 161–202 (the last with care).
Furthermore, up until the fight itself, the distinctive Alyconeus tale is the close doublet of
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the tale of Menestratus of Thespiae at Paus. 9.26.7–8, where the monstrous opponent is
explicitly stated to be a serpent (drakōn).
14. Suda s.v. Ἀγαθοῦ Δαίμονος.
15. Syriac Alexander Romance 3.7 (recension δ). For text and translation, see Budge
1889, with the relevant portion at 102–3. It is possible that this dragon fight is ultimately
derivative of the Agathos Daimon narrative: Ogden 2012.
16. Ferdowsi Shahnameh C1331–34. Khaleghi-Motlagh 1988– will be the standard
edition of the text when complete. Tr. Davis 2006: 506–8; Warner and Warner 1912:
6:148–53.
17. For more comprehensive arguments and evidence on this subject, see Ogden
2009a, 2009b, 2011: 7–56.
18. Arrian Anabasis 3.3.4– 6, incorporating Ptolemy FGrH 138 F8. It is usually believed that Ptolemy compiled his history toward the end of his reign: See Roisman 1984.
Arrian’s observation is borne out by the remnants of it that survive. All other sources give
us crows, with the serpents being preferred only here, in association with Ptolemy’s version. Strabo C814 = Callisthenes FGrH 124 F14, Diod. Sic. 17.49.5, Curtius 4.7.15, Plut.
Alexander 27, Itinerarium 21 (crows, but acknowledging the variant of serpents).
19. Diod. Sic. 17.103.4–8; Curtius 9.8.22–28: coincidence between these authors normally entails that Clitarchus is their ultimate source.
20. Cicero On Divination 2.135, Livy 26.19.7–8, Trogus as reflected in Justin 11.11.2–
5, Plut. Alexander 2–3, Ptolemy son of Hephaistion at Photius Library no. 190 (148a;
Ptolemy wrote either in the Neronian-Flavian or the Trajanic-Hadrianic one: Suda s.vv.
Ἐπαφρόδιτος and Πτολεμαῖος, respectively).
21. Eratosthenes FGrH 241 F28 apud Plut. Alexander 2–3.
22. Silius Italicus Punica 13.636: quando aperire datur nobis, nunc denique disce,
“Learn it at last, now that I am permitted to reveal it.”
23. However, other gigantic serpents found their way into the early Alexander tradition, seemingly without help from Ptolemy. Writing by 309 bc at the latest, Alexander’s
“chief helmsman of the fantastic,” Onesicritus of Astypalaea, told that the Indian king
Abisares had regaled Alexander with tales of a pair of gigantic serpents (drakontes), one
140 cubits, the other eighty cubits in length: FGrH 134 16a– c.
24. The case is made by Merkelbach 1977: 36–38. Apophis: P. Bremner-Rhind, reproduced in photographs at Budge 1910 pl. i–xix; tr. ANET 6– 7. Nigidius Figulus p. 123, 8
Swoboda records that Seth-Typhon was killed in the Memphite temple in which the
pharaohs were crowned.
25. Manetho FGrH 609 F3; cf. Quaegebeur 1975: 174– 75; Dunand 1969: 37; Dunand
1981: 277.
26. P.Oxy. 2332 lines 51–53: κατά τε ὁ ἀγαθὸς / δαίμων καταλείψει τὴν κτιζομένην
πόλειν καὶ ἀ/πελεύσεται εἰς τὴν θεοτόκον Μέμφειν καὶ ἐξερημώσηται. For this text, see
Tarn 1928: 215; Fraser 1972: 1:683–84.
27. Cassius Dio 51.17.4–5: καί τις δράκων ὑπερμεγέθης ἐξαίφνης σφίσιν ὀφθεὶς
ἀμήχανον ὅσον ἐξεσύρισε.
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28. The comic fragments are collected at Athenaeus 692f– 693e. Timoleon: Plut.
Moralia 542e, καὶ τὴν οἰκίαν Ἀγαθῷ Δαίμονι καθιερώσας.
29. LIMC Agathodaimon no. 6. Harrison 1912: 283; Dunand 1981 ad loc. take this to
be an image of Agathos Daimon. Cook 1914–40: vol. 2, part 2: 1151–52 and Mitropoulou
1977: 135 take it to be Zeus Meilichios, and the superficial resemblance of this relief to the
fourth-century Attic Zeus Meilichios reliefs is indeed strong.
30. For Zeus Meilichios, see the testimonia and discussion at Jameson et al. 1993:
81–103, 132–41; Lalonde 2006: 103–20. For his iconography, see Cook 1914–40: vol., part
2: 1091–1160; Mitropoulou 1977: 112–55.
31. Mytilene relief: Mitropoulou 1977: 178–80 (with fig. 92). Coins: LIMC Agathodaimon nos. 31, 35. See Dunand 1969: 36; Dunand 1981: 281.
32. LIMC Agathodaimon no. 3; cf. Fraser 1972: 2:356–57 n. 164; Mitropoulou 1977:
164– 65; Dunand 1981: 278, 280.
33. LIMC Agathodaimon 4; cf. Mitropoulou 1977: 159– 60 no. 1 (with fig. 79). There
is insufficient evidence to associate Mitropoulou 1977: 159– 61 no. 2 (fig. 80) with Agathos
Daimon.
34. IG vii 1815 = LIMC Agathodaimon 2; cf. Mitropoulou 1977: 161– 62 no. 3 (with
fig. 81).
35. For the pairing, see Bonnechere 2003: 234 n. 42.
36. Copenhagen Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek 1558 = IG ii2 4627 = Harrison 1912: 312, fig.
90, Harrison 1922: 355, fig. 106; Cook 1914–40: vol. 2, part 2:1162, fig. 970 = Mitropoulou
1977: 102–3 no. 6 and fig. 42.
37. Athens National Museum no. 8738 = IG ii2 2935 = Mitropoulou 1977: 99–100 no.
1 (with fig. 39). For the particular relevance of the iconography of Zeus Philios to Agathos
Daimon, see Dunand 1981: 280.
38. In biblical and classical contexts, the term “typology” is used to denote the study
of prefigurative myths.
39. The case laid out here is adumbrated at West 1997: 303–4 and argued in expansive
detail by Lane Fox 2008: 255–73. Teshub against Hedammu: text at Siegelova 1971; tr.
Haas 2006: 153– 56 (German). Tarhunna against Illuyankas: texts at Beckman 1982; tr.
Hoffner 1998: 10–14. Baal-Sapon against Yam and Lotan: text at Smith 1994, at KTU
1.1–3 = CTA 1–3; tr. Caquot et al. 1974 (French). Apollodorus Bibliotheca 1.6.3 (c. ad 100) is
the earliest extant Greek source actually to locate the battle between Zeus and Typhon
on Mount Kasios, although Pindar Pythians 1.15–28, 8.15–16, F92 Snell-Maehler locates it
in the adjacent Cilicia, just across the gulf of Issus from Mount Kasios.
40. Strabo C750–51; cf. Paus. (Periegetes) 8.29, John Malalas Chronicle 197 Dindorf.
41. Pausanias of Antioch FHG 4:467– 68, F3 = John Malalas Chronicle 37–38 Dindorf.
In other contexts, we may wish to note, the Greeks deployed Agathos Daimon as the interpretatio Graeca of the Zoroastrian “Good Principle,” Spenta Mainyu/ Ahura Mazda: Diod.
Sic. 1.94; cf. Ganschinietz 1918: 39.
42. John Malalas Chronicle 198–200 Dindorf.
43. Libanius Orations 11.85–88 (Förster edition, vol. I. Oration 2, pp. 464– 65).
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44. Dieudonné 1929 with plate ii (iv). Note, esp., 16 (eagle with thigh) and 18 (eagle
with thunderbolt).
45. Phylarchus FGrH 81 F27 = Aelian Nature of Animals 17.5.
46. Plut. Moralia 755e.
47. Perhaps the starting point for the attribution such powers to Jeremiah is Jer. 8:17,
where God, speaking through the prophet, threatens plagues of venomous, biting serpents resistant to charming.
48. For the Epiphanius recensions, see Schermann 1907. Brief discussion at Stoneman
1994, 2007: 533; Stoneman 2008: 57. A yet more confusingly contracted version of the narrative is found at Suda s.v. ἀργόλαι and [Zonaras] Lexicon s.v. ἀργόλαι; note also Suda s.vv.
Ἱερεμίας, Ὀστᾶ Γιγάντων, Ὄφις.
49. Strabo C792, Plut. Alexander 26.
50. Pliny Natural History 3.11 (Ebesus; so, too, Pomponius Mela 2.7), 5.7 (Galata),
37.54 (Sicily, including the achate), Dioscorides 5.113 (Lemnian earth an emetic for poisons), Galen De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus xii.169 Kühn
(Lemnian earth cures poisonous snakebites in general), Philostratus Heroicus 6.2 (Lemnian earth cures Philoctetes), Aelian Nature of Animals 5.2 (Crete), 5.8 (Astypalaea). See
Hasluck 1909–10 for the Greek material; Krappe 1941, 1947, with a great many parallels,
for the wider folkloristic belief.
51. [Aristotle] Mirabilia 845b; cf. Lucan 9.915–37, Lucian Philopseudes 11–13.
52. Curtius 9.8.22; Paus. 1.6.2, 1.6.8; Alexander Romance 3.32 (A); unpublished Ptolemaic inscription at Errington 1990: 265 n. 6 (Ἡρακλείδας Ἀργεάδας).
53. Livy 29.11.1 and Periocha 11; Ovid Metamorphoses 15.622–744; Valerius Maximus
1.8.2; Pliny Natural History 29.72; Arnobius Against the Gentiles 7.44–48; Augustine City of
God 3.17; Claudian On the Consulship of Stilicho 3.171–73; [Aurelius Victor] De viris illustribus 22.1–3; Latin Anthology 1.2.719e.1–7; Q. Serenus Salmonicus Liber medicinalis prooemium 1–10.
54. Harpocration s.v. Παρεῖαι ὄφεις, incorporating Hyperides F80 Jensen.
55. Diod. Sic. 18.28; Strabo C794; Curtius 10.10.20. However, Paus. 1.7.1 attributes the
transfer to Philadelphus. Discussion at Saunders 2006: 49– 62.
56. Suetonius Octavian 2.18; Cassius Dio 21.16.
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